Goals, Strategies and Tactics
Today we're going to be exploring the differences between goals, strategies and tactics.
Simply put:
Goals are a desired result we want to achieve.
Strategies are the processes we use to achieve goals.
Tactics are actions we take to implement strategies.
Let's take a look at an example.
A while back I decided to set the goal planning my week every week. My strategy at the time was to do my planning on Monday's right when I started work. This was a bad strategy, but it was compounded by the fact that I didn't have any specific tactics to make sure that I was doing my planning right when I got in. Coming in on Mondays I'd find myself just jumping into whatever needed to be done first and telling myself that I'd get to my planning right afterwards. That rarely actually happened. And while it might have been a good idea to actually try some different tactics here I didn't realize that was the issue, so I instead opted to change my strategy.
I decided that I wanted to try and start planning my week over the weekend. This was a great idea in theory but ended up being a mess because I again didn't implement any solid tactics to make sure that I was getting my planning done. With all my family commitments on weekends I found that I had trouble finding time to do my planning. I liked the results when I did manage to plan on the weekend but I wasn't able to do it consistently.
I ended up changing my strategy again and was able to get it to stick, because this time I also decided to add some tactics. Now I plan my next week on the Friday afternoons and instead of just trying to find time on Fridays, I created a reoccurring event on my calendar specifically for planning on Friday afternoons. By blocking off that time ahead of time I couldn't schedule any other projects then without moving that time block (which sometimes I do have to do).
The biggest reason this has worked for me is because let's be honest, you never just find time to do things - if it isn't in your calendar it probably isn't a priority. When I'm at my office I'm able to respect my time blocks a lot more easily. When I'm at home with the kids they are my priority and so I can't rely on having as consistent time blocks - and this comes back to the idea of working with your ADHD and what works for you. Sure I'm "sacrificing" my Friday afternoons to make my planning happen, but planning is important for managing my ADHD and so it is totally worth it.
SMART Goals
Now that we've got a better understanding of the differences between strategies and tactics let's talk a little bit about goal setting. There are a lot of ways to set your goals but today we're just going to be talking about SMART goals.
SMART stands for:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Timely
When I'm sitting down during the goal setting process I'll often start with a nebulous goal such as: I want to get in better shape. To gain clarity on what I actually want out of this goal we'll run it through the SMART goal methodology.
We'll start by getting specific. What does getting in shape mean? For me getting in shape might mean getting to the gym more and eating healthier. The key when making things specific is to also focus on making them into ways that can also be measurable. Looking at that first part we can say I want to go to the gym at least 2 times a week. This makes it both specific (we know exactly what needs to happen) and measurable (we know the frequency, twice a week).
Eating healthier is a lot harder to quantify, so we're going to have to change the wording so that we can make this measurable - let's go with I want to eat 3 healthy meals a week. If we want to get real nitty-gritty we might also want to define what we're considering a healthy meal here.
Next we're going to also want to make our goal timely. For this goal I might say I want to do be doing this for the next six weeks - and then after that it would be a good idea to evaluate how I'm doing and maybe if I want to ramp things up - or maybe if things aren't working I'll need to change what my goals are here.
Put this date in your calendar make sure that you give yourself so time to actually evaluate how your goals are going. For other goals this is a great place to add in a deadline - procrastination is a huge problem with ADHD and deadlines are great way to make sure we're not just always kicking the can down the road.
And remember we want to keep these goals attainable - I think that going to the gym twice a week and eating three healthy meals a week for the next six weeks is something I can manage. This doesn't mean you can't push yourself, but if I instead said something like - hit the gym every day and I'm only going to eat salads everyday I'm not going to be able to stick with that, I've got to be realistic with what I'm actually going to be able to do.
Finally we're going to add one of the most important parts, relevance - why is this goal important to you? Maybe you want to fit in a pair of pants for an upcoming wedding or you want to have more energy when you are playing with you kids. Regardless of why you are doing something it is important to remind yourself why your goals are important - it's easy for us to forget why we're doing things and this is especially true for some of our longer term goals. While I did this part at the end, it is also a great way to gain clarity with your goal - so feel free to try starting with your why. When you know why you want to do something it can be a lot easier to see what you need to do.
By making this a SMART goal we've gone from "I want to get in shape" to I'm going to go the gym twice a week and eat three healthy meals a week for six weeks so that I have more energy to play with my kids. In a lot of ways the SMART goal methodology is lays out what our primary strategy is going to be. Instead of just having a goal we now have a goal and a direction.
Of course we're not done just yet because we also want to be making sure we're planning on how we're going to be following through with these plans. You might decide that the best strategy for eating three healthy meals a week is to do meal planning at the beginning of the week. And to make sure you're doing your meal planning you'll probably need to different strategies and tactics as well.
Hitting our goals is all about layers upon layers of planning and strategies. It might seem overwhelming at first, but you only have to do a little bit at a time and it all builds on itself.
Adherence
Having a clear understanding of our goals allows us to implement better strategies and tactics. If we don't have a clear understanding of why implementing a certain strategy is important we're not really going to stick with it. Adherence is one of the most important factors when it comes to planning. It doesn't matter what you plan to do if you don't follow through with those plans.
Our best weapon when planning is forethought. Just by looking ahead a little bit we can do a lot to predict the rough patches we might hit and do a lot to avoid them.
If we look at out planning example from earlier, when I decided that I wanted to plan my next week on the weekend, I wasn't thinking ahead about the potential pitfalls of trying to plan with kids around. What I could have done when I was trying to work out that strategy was do a little thinking about what my weekends actually look like.
By trying to look ahead at what my potential problems might be, I'd probably have acknowledged that just finding time rarely actually happens. If I don't schedule it, there's a good chance it is going to get dropped - which means I could have realized that trying to jam something into a time frame that is inherently hard to schedule was going to make things more difficult. Since my weekends tend to be all about my kids it should have been no surprise that I wasn't going to find that time.
Or let's take a look at our eating healthier example - if I was trying to make sure I was eating healthier a good first step would be packing my lunches instead of trying to buy lunch at work. When I'm packing my lunch it is a lot easier to make those healthy choices - but I also know that sometimes I don't have time to pack a healthy lunch in the morning. So I can ask myself what might help when I don't have time to pack my lunch in the morning. Maybe I could pack my lunch the night before, or just have a really simply go to option when I'm in a rush in the morning.
What it comes down to is that when we are setting our goals, strategies and tactics - the most important thing we can think about is how we're going to follow through with those plans. We've got to be realistic here. A big part of working with your ADHD is acknowledging that we are going to have some limitations. We aren't going to stay focused forever - so make sure you're planning in breaks. We're going to forget things - so make sure that you've got reminders in place. Just because it's going to be harder sometimes doesn't mean there aren't things we can do about it.
We're going to fall off that horse sometimes. But that's okay. No ones perfect. If we take the time to make sure we know how we're going to get back up when we do fall we're going to be a lot better off.
This Episode’s Top Tips
Goals are a desired result we want to achieve. Strategies are the processes we use to achieve goals and tactics are actions we take to implement strategies.
When we're setting goals we want to be clear about what are goals are - we can use SMART goals to help us with this process. Remember SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.
One of the most important things we can do while planning is think ahead about how we are going to follow through with our intentions. If we aren't following through with our plans it doesn't matter how good those plans are because when we're not doing them, nothing happens.
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